Molestation case: Mamta Sharma to visit Guwahati

Amid national outrage over Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi's office issuing a press release with the name and photograph of the young girl molested outside a pub in Guwahati last week, Sharma yesterday said the matter is very serious, and added that she would personally talk to the Assam Government in this regard.

Sharma also hailed the sincere efforts of the Assam Government in searching for the culprits involved in the molestation case.

"I am not sending any notice. I feel that the matter is serious; thought the state government has done whatever we wanted. Yesterday they had transferred the SSP (Guwahati senior Superintendent of Police, Apurba Jiban Baruah) and they have also imposed the rule that the pubs will not be operating after 10:30 in the night," said Sharma.

"They have taken many steps on our recommendations and I will personally talk to the state government and I may also visit the state," she added.

The commission had earlier sent a two-member team to Guwahati to probe the case. One of the members of the team, Alka Lamba, was removed from a fact-finding team of the panel that went to Guwahati for making public the victim's identity.

The Editor of the television channel, which first aired the video of the mob molesting the teenaged girl, has resigned.

Guwahati's Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Apurba Jiban Baruah, who had termed the class XI student's ordeal as a stray incident that was hyped by the national media, has been transferred to Dibrugarh.

Gogoi met last evening with the Class XI student, who was molested on camera by a mob in Guwahati last week.

Gogoi assured the girl that the government will provide all protection and help for her rehabilitation. He also announced that the case would be handed over to CID.

He also criticized the local news channel that aired the footage of the molestation, saying its role was ''unethical''.

The Chief Minister's office sent out a press statement after the meeting that revealed the victim's name and shared her photograph.

The Chief Minister's office then called and retracted asking journalists not to release the photographs and ensure her identity was protected. They, however, went ahead releasing the name.

Assam Police has arrested five more accused in the Guwahati incident, thereby taking the number of those apprehended to 12.

The girl was molested last Monday as she was returning home from a party at a bar located in Guwahati's Post Office area.

The incident came to light after an amateur video of the incident was uploaded on YouTube. The video shows the mob, consisting of around 20 men, beating the girl before stripping her.

The shameful act continued for 30 minutes till police arrived and rescued the girl, and handed her over to her parents.